1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storage medium having a game program stored therein and a game apparatus; and more specifically to a storage medium having a game program stored therein for executing a game in which a plurality of characters appear, each of which can be an operation target of a player, and a game apparatus.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally, games in which one player performs an operation on a great number of game characters (hereinafter, referred to simply as “characters”) at the same time have been proposed. An exemplary game apparatus used for performing an operation on a great number of characters collectively at the same time is described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-66131 (Patent Document 1). This game apparatus is for executing a war game in which a plurality of solders appear. In this game, a military unit is formed of a plurality of solders including a commander (leader), and the player can directly perform an operation on a solder character acting as the leader. The player can also issue an instruction to move or attack to each solder character belonging to the unit led by the leader. In this way, the player can perform an operation on the plurality of solder characters at the same time.
With the game apparatus described in Patent Document 1, the player can issue simple instructions to solder characters other than the leader, but cannot perform a detailed operation individually on each solder character. Namely, with the above-described game apparatus, the player can issue rough instructions, but not detailed instructions, to each solder character other than the leader. Therefore, the degree of freedom of the player in performing an operation on the entire unit is low, and there is a narrower variety of actions which can be performed by each solder character of the unit. This involves the risk of making the game monotonous.